Grant: Project Grant

Infection is a devastating complication of surgery for cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIED), such as pacemakers. Over 25,000 Canadians undergo CIED surgery each year and this number is increasing. Approximately 1 to 5% of patients develop infection following CIED surgery, however due to more medical issues in the population, the rate of deadly CIED infections has increased in recent years. Expenses associated with these infections can be higher than $100,000 per patient, resulting in approximately $5.2 million in health care costs per year. The ability to track CIED postsurgical infection rates and determine causes is important to prevent future deaths and high costs associated with this increasingly common procedure. Unfortunately, there is no Canada-wide way to monitor and report CIED infections as it is quite costly and requires a lot of personnel time. As better awareness and improved reporting of CIED infections may help to decrease complication rates, creating a national surveillance practice is critical to provide the best care to patients in Canadian hospitals. An alternate approach uses administrative data (data collected through electronic health records) to identify CIED infections. This approach is less expensive and can be automated. However, it is unclear if this would be feasible and accepted by all partners, including groups that track infections, healthcare providers that implant CIEDs, and patient groups. This work will allow us to use national data to see CIED infection rates across Canada and find CIED infections using data from national electronic health records. We will work with policymakers, healthcare providers, patient groups and groups that track infections to determine the best way to move forward with this work. As part of our research team, we will include collaborators and researchers from across Canada, share our findings, and make recommendations that are important to our partners.